romancore

by F. Tupper Saussy

Many Americans are legally forced, beyond their desire or ability, to work for powerful foreign operators.

Consider the American farmer whose crop prices in his own country are permitted by Congress to be undercut by imported grain that must be sold here to keep a foreign bank’s debtor from defaulting.

Or the American taxpayer whose home is seized by the IRS, its value going to compensate the International Monetary Fund for some middle-eastern loan that went bad.

Could it be that the coercion of American citizens into an international economic agenda is the logical outworking of a religious manifesto?

The problem

A manifesto known as “Vatican II” — the Roman Catholic “Constitution On The Church” propounded by the Second Vatican Council in 1964 — summons Roman Catholics who hold office in secular government to “vigorously contribute their effort so that the goods of this world may be more equitably distributed among all men.”

Many Americans who know little and care less about Roman Catholicism elect to important public offices men and women subject to Vatican II. In so doing they place their fortunes at the disposal of Vatican internationalism.

The truth is, American secular authority clings to a Catholic infrastructure which the celebrity newscasters give us only occasional glimpses of.

We caught a fleeting glance eight years ago in Carl Bernstein’s remarkable Time Magazine article on how the President of the United States “conspired” — Bernstein’s word, not mine— with Pope John Paul II to bring about the demise of the Soviet Union. (Two weeks later, Time published the shocked response of a University of Massachusetts sociology professor:

Last week I taught my students about the separation of church and state. This week I learned that the Pope is running U.S. foreign policy. No wonder our young people are cynical about American ideals.)

Bernstein noted that the leading American players behind the secret Reagan/Holiness conspiracy were all “devout Roman Catholics”— namely CIA Director William Casey, National Security Advisors Richard Allen and Judge William Clark, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Ambassador-at-Large Vernon Walters, and Ambassador to the Vatican State William Wilson.

But he failed to mention that the entire Senate Foreign Relations committee was governed by Roman Catholics as well — specifically, Senators John Kerry (Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Communications), Daniel P. Moynihan (Near Easter and South Asian Affairs), Paul Sarbanes (International Economic Policy, Trade, Oceans & Environment), and Christopher Dodd (Western Hemisphere and Peace Corps Affairs); not to mention that American domesticpolicy was under the leadership of Roman Catholics George Mitchell (Senate Majority Leader) and Tom Foley (Speaker of the House of Representatives)

Indeed, when Bernstein’s story hit the stands, there was virtually no arena of federal legislative activity that was not directly controlled by a Roman Catholic senator or representative.

Each and every one of these legislators was a Roman Catholic layperson subject to Vatican II’s instructions to use his or her secular offices to advance the cause of Roman Catholicism. Vatican II calls upon Catholic politicians, “whoever they are...to expend all their energy for the growth of the Church and its continuous sanctification” so as “to make the Church present and operative in those places and circumstances where only through them can it become the salt of the earth” (IV, 33).

Catholic politicians having secular monetary and taxing authority (“by their competence in secular disciplines and by their activity”) are called upon to redistribute worldly goods according to the Church’s design -- “[to] vigorously contribute their effort so that...the goods of this world may be more equitably distributed among all men, and may in their own way be conducive to universal progress in human and Christian freedom” (IV, 36).

Nothing in American law forbids this from happening. The “free exercise” clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects a religious establishment’s right to encourage its believers not only to ensconce themselves in secular government, but also to use any legitimate means to subject otherwise uncooperative fellow-citizens to its agenda of internationalizing private American wealth.

When legislators, executives, and judges seem to put the welfare of other nations ahead of their own, it may not be treason they are committing. They may well be freely exercising the Roman Catholic religion of Vatican II.

The remedy

But what of those millions of Americans who do not believe they are looking to Roman Catholicism for their moral guidance? Is there some legal or theological premise that requires non-Catholics to part with large portions of their income annually in order to underwrite Vatican II’s international agenda?

I can’t speak for all moral disciplines, but I know that the Bible urges the followers of Christ not to pay self-assessed taxes. When Jesus and Peter arrived at Capernaum, the customs agents asked Peter “Doth not your master pay tribute?” To which Peter replied, “Yes.” Although the New International Version distorts the context of Matthew 17:24-27 to Rome’s advantage by rendering Peter’s crucial reply as “Yes, He does,” the fact remains that Peter was affirming a negative. “Yes, He doth not” is the grammatically correct inference. Jesus was not a taxpayer.

Tribute, in law, is a sum paid to a superior potentate to secure his friendship or protection. Since the potentate for whom the Capernaum agents were soliciting— Tiberias Caesar— was not superior to Jesus, our Lord took Peter aside and lectured him briefly on why the children of God are not required to pay tribute.

Having excluded himself and Peter from taxation, Jesus then defined the law of tribute: “However, lest we offend them,...give unto them.” If excluding ourselves offends the potentate, we give to him. And if the potentate is not offended by our exclusion, we are free to dedicate our resources to the family of God.

The American potentate, which the facts identify as Roman to the core, demands tribute through uniform excise taxes on a wide range of objects — petroleum, chemicals, alcohol, hazardous waste, insurance, tires, etc. We secure its friendship and protection by paying these taxes without flinching.

But the potentate makes no such demand on income earned by United States citizens from sources derived within the nation’s borders. It is as though Internal Revenue law was written by biblical scholars impeccably well-versed in Matthew 17! For the law denies the potentate the right to be offended by the exclusion of the children of God from income taxation. Indeed, just as Jesus declared, “the children are free.”

However, many U.S. citizens, among whom are huge numbers of nominal Christians, have empowered the potentate to demand tribute. They have done this by making themselves liable for taxation on domestically-sourced income by that process the IRS calls “voluntary self-assessment.”

Since the assessment does not arise from the potentate but from the citizenry, the potentate rightly takes offense when a citizen attempts to renege on his self-assessment.

There is important Christian scripture on self-assessed tribute, the ignorance of which I believe has robbed American Christianity (as opposed to the Body of Christ) of the power of God.

The precept, given at II Kings 20:12-18, is that if sanctified resources are voluntarily disclosed to a potentate, God authorizes the potentate to capture those resources and dispose of them at its pleasure.

Until those who profess Christianity begin examining and exercising the U.S. citizen’s miraculous exclusion from income taxation, America will continue suffering under the divine curse that attends voluntary self-assessment.

American Christianity will continue, as Paul put it, “having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof...”

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